The New Middle East: The World After the Arab Spring.

• Author: Smith, Anthony
• Position: Book review

THE NEW MIDDLE EAST: The World After the Arab Spring

Author: Paul Danahar

Published by. Bloomsbury, London, 2013, 467pp, US$23.33 (hb), $15.77 (pb).

THE SYRIA DILEMMA

Editors: Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel

Published by. Boston Review, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2013, 285pp, US$12.30.

The New Middle East is written by the BBC's Paul Danahar. This is an overview of the impact of Middle Eastern political change, with chapters on Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, US foreign policy, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Danahar takes on a few big themes here. Fie ponders the impact that the anticipated global production of shale gas and tight oil (in the US and many other places) will have on the cohesion of Gulf states. Fie concludes that Saudi Arabia, amongst others in the Gulf, are headed for trouble. He discusses (and refutes) the notion of 'Arab exceptionalism', which is the view taken by some commentators when Arab countries proved immune to the pressures of the wave of democracy that occurred in the late 1980s and 1990s. Danahar argues that events in the Arab world that began with the deposing of dictators in Tunisia and Egypt are proof positive that Arabs want the same rights as everybody else. He sees Egypt as central to this dialogue, a country that has almost been defined by a tension between the Army and the Muslim Brotherhood. Danahar concludes that the Muslim Brotherhood, under then President Morsi, had won this struggle: 'The long war between the Brother and the army is over'. This is an unfortunate conclusion to draw in a book published on the verge of the supposedly pliant General el-Sisi deposing Morsi and jailing large numbers of Brotherhood supporters. So the process is not linear, but Danahar's wider point remains. In an interview with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres tells the author that Israel still remains the only true democracy in the Middle East because in Arab countries women are not free of their husbands and male relatives. Danahar disagrees with this, noting that democracies are invariably a work in progress. He equally dedicates some space to the rightward trends within Israeli politics, which include the slow rise of the ultra-orthodox--Danahar sees this community as having much in common with conservative Islam on gender issues.

Arguably the most valuable chapter in this book, in terms of what it adds to the body of material, is Danahar's account of his experiences in Libya, which included encounters with Gaddafi himself...